Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Adam Hills, Joan Rivers and Adele walk into a bar...

I particularly love these two comments. more for the underlying principles than the hilarious assertions than his ass-kicking jokes.

1) "Adele is one of the few women in pop music that I want my daughter to look up to."

Yes. Thank you. I am so glad that a celebrity made this comment about celebrities and made it personal. Media stars are praised less for their talent and more for how they look at the Oscars, what sort of a message does this send not only to children, but people of all ages, races and sizes?

A great majority of the women that we see on the screen have thin, "perfect" bodies but the very concept that these bodies are perfect serves up everything that is wrong with he fame industry on a bright and shiny platter. The reality is that very few women look like those few who are constantly flaunted by the media. When someone like Joan Rivers calls Adele fat she also calls me fat, and every other women with a body similar to or larger than Adele's. What does this do to the self esteem of literally millions of women?

When I think of popular female musicians we think of Miley Cyrus, Ke$ha, Delta Goodrem, Rihanna, Adele, Madonna, Taylor Swift.

ALL THIN, EXCEPT ADELE!

I'm not saying that the other women mentioned in these lists are lesser role models because they are thin and I don't think that they are all unhealthily skinny. I do think that the ratio of 'tall and thin' to 'every other body shape' is a complete reversal to that of the real world.

We see size six, eight and ten women plastered over buildings, websites, magazines and the screen; and all of a sudden beauty has a size. According to the media, people who don't fit into that narrow size gap aren't beautiful and this absolutely affects men as well. It isn't true though, and women such as Adele, or men such as Jonah Hill, remind the public that beauty and talent come in all shapes and sizes.

Let's not take the very few celebrities with common body types and pick on them for being fat, please, Joan Rivers. Let's not even praise realistically shaped stars for being a normal size. Let's just acknowledge that the people that we see in magazines are beautiful regardless of their size, just like we should with people that we see in the street.

2) "When you spent more money on your own face than the producers of Life of Pi spent on that tiger."

Awesome, another astute observation about self confidence that not only applies to the lives of celebrities but average lives as well.

Spending ridiculous amounts of money on make-up, gym memberships, meal replacement shakes, cosmetic surgery and alternative beauty treatments is a sign of low self esteem, even if the person splurging on such things is a celebrity and even if they are already naturally beautiful in the eyes of others. The very fact that they do those things tells us that they have low self confidence. Joan Rivers jokes about Adele's weight, but she isn't even comfortable ageing naturally. I don't think Adele will give Rivers' comments a second thought; because if we stand Adele and Joan Rivers next to each other it will be easy to see which of the two has higher self esteem. And this is the reason that Adele is a wonderful role model for young women.